Don't (Wanna) Know Who I Am
by altschmerz
Summary: Buck takes a nasty fall out on a job, and when he wakes up, he can't remember anything. Not what happened, not who the people in his hospital room are, not even his own name. The way back is slow and hard, and begs the question - who actually is Evan Buckley, and is he someone worth remembering? (Luckily, the 118 has an answer, at least to the second.) (season 1, gen, found family)
1. Chapter 1

welcome to gav's house of found family whump and fluff how may i help you today, we've got a good old fashioned medically inaccurate amnesia trope fest first up! this was supposed to be a oneshot but it got A LITTLE LONG so i've split it up.

this is set earlier in season one, after chim's accident and after hen and buck go to bobby's apartment, but before things get super serious with abby.

title from mother mother's 'alright', which serves as the theme song for this fic, effectively.

* * *

When he wakes, it's slowly and in drifts, senses taking their time in returning to him. His body feels like someone has laid weighted blankets over each of his limbs, and tremors run through him every couple of moments, uncontrollable shivers unrelated to any kind of cold. His chest rises and falls with quick, shallow breaths, and there's a sound coming into clarity, a strange robotic beeping. As he listens harder, trying to make out what it is, it speeds up just a little, and this is the same moment his sense of smell returns. Some kind of chemical scent, sharp and metallic, fills his throat, and he almost coughs.

It's the light that does it. When he manages to coax heavy, uncooperative eyelids into raising just slightly, the cold, bright white light over his head tells him exactly where he is, and a low groan rises in his throat. Waking up in the hospital is never a good feeling. The list of good reasons to be waking up in the hospital is very short, and the list of bad reasons is very long, and he would hazard a guess that probably none of the good reasons involve not remembering how you got there.

Because he can't. Remember how he got there. Though, the absolutely brutal headache he's experiencing probably has something to do with it.

As his eyes adjust to the inhumanely bright lighting shouting down at him from the ceiling, he's able to take in more of his surroundings. There's a heart monitor beeping away next to him, the source of the shrill sound he'd heard earlier, and a pulse oximeter clipped to his finger. His entire body aches in a kind of dull background noise. Carefully rolling his heavy, pounding head to the side, he notices that he isn't alone. There's someone else in the room with him.

There's another man in a chair next to his bed, watching him with a calm, neutral expression. The man doesn't say anything, presumably waiting for him to speak first, but he doesn't quite have his wits about him enough for that yet. It should be scary, to be so knocked off kilter, completely unable to defend himself should the need arise. But something tells him, innate and without explanation, that he has absolutely nothing to fear with this man in the room. He gets the distinct feeling, deep in his chest, that there isn't a safer person, nobody more capable of making sure that absolutely nothing is going to happen to him.

"Hey," the man eventually says, and his voice strikes that same familiar, safe feeling that his face did, though he's still unable to put a name to either.

Instead of trying, or of badgering his dry throat into speech, he looks around again, this time focusing on his own body, trying to locate the precise reason he's in a hospital, because it can't just be a headache. His head gives a particularly sharp throb, and as it fades, he notices another feeling, accompanying the pain.

Something on the back of his head itches. It's wildly irritating, and his face crumples into an annoyed frown. It takes several moments of concentrating very hard to persuade his uncooperative hand to reach up and feel around for it, trying to get whatever shirt tag is poking him in the scalp away. His fingertips have just barely brushed what feels like gauze, taped to the back of his skull, when the man in the chair makes a disapproving sound, catching his wrist and pulling his hand down with an ease that he, honestly, resents a little bit.

"Hey, no, Buck, don't touch that." The words are just this side of rebuking, a soft chide that lands in the same area of a parent warning a toddler not to touch a hot stove.

"Rude," he mutters, because the itching feeling is very much still there and very much still driving him absolutely nuts. The man in the chair chuckles quietly, and reaches over him to grab a small cup from a stand at the side of the bed.

Buck supposes he's going to forgive him, given he seems about to solve Buck's throat issue. The man sits back down, the cup in one hand, a bendy straw poking over the rim. He uses his other hand to curve carefully over the side of Buck's neck, under his head away from the itchy-tag feeling, helping him sit up enough to not choke on the water in the cup. The grip the man has on him is cautious and gentle, and Buck is grateful for it, though it serves as a grim reminder of exactly how wobbly his entire existence is at the present moment.

When he's drained the small cup of water, the man guides Buck's head back down to the crinkly, starched hospital pillow. Once Buck is resettled, his companion shifts in his seat, and it seems for a moment like he's about to get up, maybe leave the room. Something about the thought sends a spike of panic through Buck's chest, and his hand shoots out to try and halt the departure.

He must be pretty badly concussed, because he misses by about a mile, hand swiping through the empty air as nausea lurches in his stomach and his head spins.

"Hey." His voice is just as calm and reassuring as it was the first time he spoke, and now one of those hands that had helped Buck with the water is on his forearm, warm against his chilled skin. Grounding. "I'm not going anywhere, I'm just hitting the call button. Nurse said to call when you woke up. I'm not leaving."

Buck lets his eyes squeeze closed, the lights like spokes driving into his aching head. He twists his arm until he can return the grip the man sitting with him has on his wrist, fingers twisted in the fabric of the flannel shirt he thinks he remembers being blue. A moment later he risks cracking one eye open, just to be sure.

It is blue, predominantly. Blue and grey. Buck is more comforted by having remembered this while his eyes were closed than he probably should be. It was only a few seconds.

When the nurse walks in, she dims the lights somewhat, a fact for which Buck is so grateful he basically owes her a life-debt. He's able to actually open his eyes now, without squinting, and thus is able to see the two people that follow the nurse into the room. The pair is a woman and a man, dressed in street clothes, and thus unlikely to be medical staff.

As Buck is in the middle of piecing together a question to try and figure out what these seemingly random people are doing in his hospital room, the nurse interrupts. She stands beside the bed, opposite where the man sits in his chair, and looks at him with an unreadably polite expression.

"Sir, you've had a head injury. You're in the hospital." She presses a few buttons and the bed shifts, whirring softly beneath him as it lifts him into a semi-sitting position. Buck doesn't lose his grip on the flannel shirt, and the man's hand doesn't leave his arm, and he's glad.

Beyond the nurse, the new arrivals hover near the foot of the bed, looking at Buck like they're expecting him to say or do something important. As the nurse checks something on one of the monitors, they exchange a glance, and Buck looks away, back to the woman speaking to him. She's just asked him a question, and he blinks at her, embarrassed to have missed it entirely.

"Can you tell me what day it is?" the nurse repeats patiently. Her nametag, shifting into view, says Diana.

"Yeah, it's…" Buck stops, frowning. He looks from Diana, to the man at his right, and back to her. "It's, uh." Well that's not good. He doesn't have the faintest idea what day it is. "I don't know, actually. Sorry."

"It's alright," Diana says, giving him a small, reassuring smile. "That's pretty normal, you landed pretty hard when you fell. It's expected you'd be a little disoriented. Can you tell me your name?"

Okay, this one he definitely does know.

"Buck," he says confidently. "It's Buck."

Another glance exchanged between the strange people at the end of the bed, and the grip on his forearm tightens noticeably. Buck feels the anxiety that's been buzzing in his chest behind everything leap into the foreground. He looks at the man next to him, whose expression has gone grim in a new way entirely, and Buck really wants him to stop making that face. For lack of being able to figure out how to make that happen, Buck returns his attention to the nurse. She's frowning too, though her frown makes him feel markedly less guilty than the man's.

"Can you tell me your first name?" Diana asks, carefully specific in a way that makes him go cold.

"Is-" He stops, swallows hard. Wishes he had more water. Hopes he's not bruising the arm underneath the flannel sleeve he's holding onto harder every moment. "Is Buck not my first name?"

"Okay," Diana mutters under her breath. It doesn't answer Buck's question, but before he can repeat himself, she looks past him, to the man on his right. "Okay, Buck, can you tell me who he is?" She's pointing now, right across, and Buck looks over at the only other person who's been here the entire time.

In all the time he's been awake in this room, that's something Buck hasn't actually given a great deal of thought to. He may be a little rattled, brain-wise, may not be able to remember what day it is, might be slightly hazy on his name, but he's a decently smart person, and he can put facts together with context clues and figure a few things out.

The man is older than him, was sitting with him waiting for him to wake up in the hospital. Held his head up while he drank the water, sat here and basically held Buck's hand while he tries to get his wits about him enough to remember his own name. It adds up, these facts, and the way Buck felt when he looked over and saw him there, realized that this was somebody he was completely safe with. Protected by.

"Yeah. That's my dad, right?"

The woman at the end of the bed, the one in street clothes, makes a choking sound, throwing a hand over her mouth to stifle… laughter? The man who'd come in with her is abruptly smiling, eyes glinting with mirth, and he says, "Well, I mean, you're not totally wrong, Bobby's-"

"Guys." The man - Bobby? Not Buck's dad, then? - has raised his voice, and it's a little shocking to hear it above that gentle, reassuring murmur, a warning rebuke.

"Buck." Diana the nurse has his attention again, and Buck's starting to feel dizzy, focus pinging around. "I need you to stay with me for a moment. What's the last thing you remember?"

Okay. Okay, he can do this. He can focus, as soon as the pounding in his head dies down, he'll be able to focus, and then he can remember what happened, and who these people are, and who he is, and they can all go home and it'll be fine. Except… Except the harder he thinks, the more nothing he runs up against, empty space where memory and information should be.

Buck can't remember. It's not just how he got here, not just the name of the man who'd been there since he woke up, not just whoever the hell these people at the end of his bed are. He can't remember anything. Not even, apparently, his own first name.

It's only when the back of the hospital bed starts going down again, Diana's voice accompanying the whir of the motor, that Buck realizes he's having some kind of panic attack. He tries to stop it, to will his heart to slow down as the monitor screeches warnings in his ears, force his chest to stop heaving with frantic breaths, but it's to no avail. The enormity of it, the chasm left behind by everything that should be there, feels like it's going to swallow him alive.

"Buck."

The voice cuts through, joining Diana's. It's that same voice that had first given him his name back to begin with, steady and calm and loud enough to make it through the panic and the wild beeping of the heart monitor. Bobby says his name again, and this time it's accompanied by a squeeze of his forearm. Buck squeezes back, fingers digging hard enough now that he's sure he's going to leave a mark. He'd feel guilty if he could feel anything but terrified.

"Buck, you need to breathe." Bobby's other hand covers Buck's clutching one, warming his shaking fingers. "Come on, kid, we need you to calm down and breathe. In and out. That's all you have to do. In," he says it slowly, and Buck clings to the word with all his might, forcing his lungs to draw in a deep breath, exhaling as Bobby guides, "Out."

They repeat the process several times, until the monitor slows to a normal pace, and Buck feels way less like he's about to pass out. His head throbs, and he still can't remember a single thing beyond the last fifteen minutes, but he's something approaching calm, and it's a start.

Over the next couple of hours, Buck lives through a blur of tests and doctors and his room's three strangers explaining who the hell they all are. He finds out that his name is Evan Buckley, which would definitely explain the nickname Buck had called him. He's twenty-six years old, and he's a firefighter. Bobby is Bobby Nash, his station captain, and the man and woman who'd come in with the nurse are Chimney and Hen, who work with him at the 118.

A small earthquake, not bad enough to cause property damage but bad enough to knock a person off a roof if it happened at exactly the wrong moment, is what's landed him here. According to Bobby, nobody else was hurt. A teenager got stuck on a roof going for a frisbee, and had already been brought to safety when the quake threw Buck twelve feet to the ground and the rock that gifted him four stitches and a case of retrograde amnesia.

The tests come back mostly clean, meaning there's no massive brain bleed about to kill him at any moment, though this is minimally reassuring to Buck, who wouldn't honestly preferred that, because that could be fixed. What they're left with instead is some vague medical-ese about swelling and how this is, really, an extremely rare outcome.

The doctor sounds kind of fascinated, which serves to irritate Buck further. He says it should likely clear up on its own as his brain heals itself - the brain, Dr. Rochester says, is a miraculous thing nobody truly understands. The other option, though, the one that sticks in Buck's mind, pinging around all that empty space, is the version where he doesn't get his memory back at all. It's possible, Dr. Rochester said after a bit of prodding.

"No need to worry yet, it's way too soon for that," he's quick to add, when Buck's expression gets grimmer and grimmer. "Give it some time. There's no need for you to stay here, you're a very lucky young man, aside from the obvious, just the concussion and some bruising. Try and spend some time in familiar places, doing familiar things. If your headache gets suddenly a lot worse, or you notice you're bleeding from your ears or nose or anything like that, come back right away."

"Bleeding," Buck repeats faintly. He feels sicker than he had since he'd just woke up, and he wishes he'd asked Bobby to stay when the doctor came to give him the final verdict. "From my ears or nose."

"Unlikely, but be aware just in case," the doctor says, in the same neutral voice he's been speaking in for most of this conversation - except for the part where he was talking about all of the ways in which Buck is a mystery of medical science.

"Right. Be aware. Sure."

"Is there someone you can stay with? You probably shouldn't be alone tonight, with the memory loss, it would be disorienting."

Though some of the first hour or so after he woke up has gone hazy now, something Dr. Rochester assures him is completely normal, Buck does remember the part where Bobby told him that he lives with roommates.

"Yeah," he says numbly.

Hen is the one who ends up driving him home. She talks as she drives, stuff about the other calls they went out on earlier that week, maybe trying to jog his memory, maybe just trying to fill the silence Buck can feel pressing in around them, pressing out inside his own mind, echoing around all that empty space. His head feels like an abandoned mansion, rooms and halls gutted of furniture and photographs, any trace of life cored out.

They pull up outside a decently sized house with a tennis racket and a soccer ball in the front yard, and what looks to be a single, abandoned red converse sneaker. Buck takes it all in, eyes flicking from the sidewalk, to the shoe, to the front door, and out around, studying everything he can see.

"Anything look familiar at all? Anything you recognize?" Hen asks from where she sits in the driver's seat. The car idles under them as Buck tries to focus, to see if he knows who that shoe belongs to, if it might be his, if he knows the feeling of those front steps as he leaves for work or comes home from a night out.

"No," he says, honestly. The word comes out uncertain and quiet, and Buck feels very small. Los Angeles looms out around them in all directions, this woman he feels like he should know so well a stranger beside him, his house in front of him striking not a single spark of recognition. "I don't recognize anything."


	2. Chapter 2

_so what were the odds i had an entire new chapter for this already done but forgot to upload it for like... more than a month. at any rate, sorry for that, and here is (finally!) chapter two! chapter total updated from four to five thanks to some scenes ballooning out of control and pushing other stuff out further. _

_title from mother mother's 'alright', which serves as the theme song for this fic, effectively._

* * *

Hen takes the lead up the walkway to the house, and Buck is glad - he doesn't really want to take the lead on anything right now, not when he genuinely couldn't even identify what street they're standing on at the moment. She doesn't really talk on their way up to the front door, and Buck wonders why, if maybe Hen is just a quiet person or if she doesn't know his roommates well enough to make small talk about them.

Buck, obviously, definitely doesn't. He doesn't even know how many roommates he has or what their names are, and the yawning void of uncertainty waiting for him behind that door lends a shyness to his steps. He lags even farther behind Hen, feeling like he's dragging his legs through quick-dry concrete, keeping her between himself and the door.

At this point he can barely pick her out of a lineup, but Hen is exactly one of three people he even vaguely knows at all, and besides. He's got a feeling about her, not quite the same one he'd had when he'd woken up and seen Bobby sitting beside his bed in the hospital, but a similar kind of feeling. It's the kind of feeling that tells her that she's a safe person to be around, someone who can serve as an anchor point in his unmoored, question filled reality. So, yeah. Dogged by the prickle of anxious nerves and the weight of everything he doesn't know, Buck stays behind Hen.

After a walk from the car that feels simultaneously like it took forever and like he'd blinked and it was over, Hen stops at the door, bringing Buck staggering to a halt behind her. A wave of dizziness has come over him at approximately that moment, which is why he's not entirely aware of Hen bending down and fishing around until she pulls a key out of a half-dead potted plant. As she opens the front door, Buck steadies himself on the porch railing and tries to plaster a friendly smile across his face. If he's going to be making a first impression on the people he apparently lives with, he wants it to be a good one.

It doesn't turn out to be necessary. Hen pulls the door open, stops dead in her tracks, says, "Oh hell no," out loud, and then immediately closes it again.

To say that Buck is confused would be wildly understating things.

"Is this…" He blinks around, craning his neck to get a look at the numbers next to the door. The headache that's persisted since he woke up pounds harder when he leans back, and Buck winces. "Is this the wrong house?"

Snorting, Hen doesn't even finish her answer before she's taking him by the shoulders and bodily turning him around, shepherding him back towards the car. The explanation she gives as they walk is, "Yeah, no, no way in hell am I letting you go home to that after you about split your head open this morning. Not happening."

"What's wrong?" Buck asks. Hen opens the passenger's side of the car and guides him into the seat, stopping short of actually reaching over him to clip the seatbelt herself, a small mercy for which he is grateful. "Is everybody out of town, or?"

"Nah," she says, then rounds the car and gets into her own side. She doesn't start it right away, instead fishing her phone out of her jacket pocket and tapping at the screen, sending someone a text message. "Let's just say it doesn't look like a good environment for rest and recovery. When you told us your roommates were jocks, I didn't quite understand exactly how…" At this point, Hen looks up, abandoning her text to wave her fingers out the window, back towards the house. "Frat-y it actually was in there."

"Oh," is all Buck says in response. Truth be told, he doesn't really understand her point. Does he actually live in a frat house? The lack of Greek letters on the outside of the building would indicate not, and it's a moment of acute, almost laughable frustration that he realizes he has somehow retained the factual information of what a fraternity is, but not whether or not he might live in one.

There's a short, muted buzz indicating she's gotten a reply to her text, and Hen looks down. She grins at whatever she sees, then starts the car.

"Okay," Hen says as they pull away from the curb. "Change of plans. Since you live in some college boy nightmare house, I'm taking you to Chim's instead."

One unrecognizable street gives way to another as Hen navigates residential Los Angeles. Buck shifts in his seat, looking away from the window. Trying to focus on anything going on outside is going to drive him off the deep end if he keeps trying to pick out landmarks, street names, anything at all he might recognize.

"I'd just take you back to my place," Hen continues, "but Karen - that's my wife, Karen, our son is named Denny - is in a meeting and I don't want to show up with a plus-one without checking in, y'know? So we're gonna swing you 'round to Chimney's place, he's setting up the futon for you." She stops at a red light, fingers tapping a rapid pattern against the steering wheel. It's the only indication that something is out of the ordinary here, that this isn't just any old day in the car with a friend. Everything about her demeanour is calm and collected, but that tapping still gives her away, fast and agitated.

Something uncomfortable and maybe guilty squeezes in Buck's chest and he looks down at his own hands. There's a small scar on the knuckle of his index finger, and it goes without saying he can't remember how it got there.

"You really don't, like…" Buck trails off, shrugging, wishing he remembered anything that could help him put together if this is something they would normally do for him or if this is pity talking. "I'll be fine, if you want to take me back to-"

"Absolutely not," Hen says firmly, cutting him off before he can finish the suggestion. "On account of the whole amnesia thing I'm gonna give you a pass on even thinking I would leave you there by yourself with people you yourself have told me you barely know, who were playing _beer pong_ at five o'clock in the afternoon on a Thursday. Even if the doctor hadn't told told us not to leave you alone, that's a place to party, not to recover from a major head injury."

"Oh," is all Buck comes up with to say in response, for the second time in the last ten minutes. He feels like he's learned more about himself and his life in that one almost-sharp response than he has in most of the hours since he woke up not knowing any of it.

So, he and his roommates aren't close then. The way she'd described it had struck him oddly - 'people you yourself have told me you barely know'. Buck isn't sure who that says more about, his roommates or himself.

"How did I meet them?" he asks eventually. Hen takes her eyes off the road for a split second, just long enough to glance over at him, then immediately refocuses.

"Meet who?"

"My roommates." It feels awkward to ask, but Buck figures he'd probably better get used to it. Asking Hen how he'd met his roommates is probably the least of his concerns, when it comes to asking questions about the kind of thing you shouldn't have to ask other people to tell you.

Once he clarifies, there's a long moment of hesitation that Buck can't make heads or tails of before she eventually answers.

"Craigslist," is what she says, short and carefully scrubbed of any intonation, though there's a twitch at the corner of her mouth that indicates she finds this to be both entertaining and regrettable. "I remember when you told us that, I'm pretty sure Bobby about had a heart attack. Chimney asked if you'd ever seen Dateline in your life, and you asked him what Dateline was."

Apparently, what that says about him is he's the type of person who finds roommates on Craigslist. Buck isn't quite sure how to feel about that, but he can't help the small smile that forms. It's an amusing thought, really, and either he must have been poking fun at Chimney or Chimney must have explained, given Buck does in fact know what Dateline is now.

That's been an odd facet of this whole amnesia thing. Buck seems to have retained most general information, facts, things about the world and the way things work in it, it's just anything personal he's lost. He's a blank slate of a fully formed person, who knows how to tie his shoes and what Dateline is but not how he met his roommates or whether he's seeing anyone. He spends the rest of the drive trying very hard not to think about it, while Hen tells him what she knows about his roommates - not much, she thinks they're college students, nice enough, but they aren't really friends.

"Beer pong?" is what Chimney says when he opens the front door to his apartment. He's got one eyebrow raised high, and Buck notices for the first time a tiny red 'x' that dots his forehead, a birthmark, or maybe a scar. Buck catches himself staring and looks deliberately way, gaze landing somewhere between the hallway's wall and floor.

"Beer pong," Hen solemnly confirms, ushering Buck around her and towards the threshold of the apartment with a firm but gentle grip on his upper arm. "Alright, you two try not to burn anything down tonight, and I mean, I guess if you do then at least you know who to call."

And then she's gone, and Buck is alone in the front entryway of Chimney's apartment, wishing Hen would come back. They hadn't been alone for too long, but it had been longer than he'd been alone with any of the others, and it had definitely been long enough for him to get more used to her than anyone else he's 'met'. It feels awkward, to be standing here with this friend he doesn't know, in an apartment he doesn't recognize though odds are he's been here before.

Luckily, Chimney either isn't feeling the same pressure of awkwardness that Buck is suffocating under or he's really good at pretending, because after a few uncomfortable moments where they stand around not talking, he snaps out of it. Moving away from the door, Chimney starts talking over his shoulder, motioning for Buck to follow him. Just a moment's pause, and then Buck is doing as he's told.

Chimney explains as he walks that he's got the futon set up, and Bobby swung by earlier with a duffel bag of his clothes from the station. Apparently, they all keep them there, and Buck's is sitting next to the opened out futon now, full of clothes he couldn't identify as his if his life depends on it.

It's starting to feel redundant, looking around and identifying all the things he knows he should recognize, knows should spark at least the hint of familiarity in his mind, but don't even for a moment. He can't help it though - everything is new, right now, every corner Buck turns around hides another piece of his life he can't fit into a puzzle with a missing picture. The only thing he feels even remotely like he knows are these three people, these friends he made at work, and it's a complete reliance that sets him off-balance.

There's no way Chimney misses the way Buck acting, his odd quiet and darting eyes, but it seems to roll off the older man entirely. He conducts himself like things are completely normal - or at least, what Buck assumes is completely normal for Chimney. The TV is turned on, a stack of DVDs set on the coffee table, and a takeout menu next to it.

"These movies are some of your favorites," Chimney says, flopping down to sit on the extended futon and leaning against what usually functions at the back of the couch. "I've got some questions about your taste, but some of 'em are decent. And that's your favorite pizza place, there, I called them when Hen texted me, ordered your usual - which is absolutely disgusting, by the way, it's basically a crime, but y'know, maybe it'll help you call some stuff up. They say sense memory is really powerful."

Instead of saying anything, because now all of his words seem to have fled his mind as well, and there's a lump in his throat, Buck just nods. He walks over and sits down next to Chimney, moving much more slowly and carefully thanks to his concussed, aching head. All he really wants to do is take a shower and go to bed, but he's not supposed to get his stitches wet for another day at minimum, and he's already spent a lot of today sleeping.

So he sits on the futon next to Chimney and watches the movie and, letting it wash over him, trying not to try too hard to remember it as one of his favorites. Buck figures maybe trying so hard is making his memory clam up even tighter, that maybe it'll be easier if he stops trying at all. Nothing comes up, but he does enjoy the movie quite a bit, so that has to be something. Maybe twenty minutes in, Chimney goes downstairs to get the pizza from the delivery driver, and again, Buck enjoys it, but it doesn't help him remember anything.

By the time they're halfway through the next movie, Buck is exhausted, his head is throbbing, and he's beyond frustrated. The reality of his situation feels as if it's pressing down on him heavier and heavier by the moment, and it doesn't escape Buck at all that were it not for the grace of his friends - his _coworkers_ from the station, he'd be completely lost in a world he doesn't know.

Evidently a perceptive person, Chimney pauses the movie before Buck realizes he's reached for the remote at all.

"You look pretty beat," is all Chimney says, voice light and easy. "I can't remember the last time you were this quiet for this long, probably means your head hurts. Why don't we call it a night, huh? Everything'll still be here when you wake up."

_Easy for you to say,_ Buck thinks. _Last time I woke up, everything was gone._

Not waiting for much of a response, Chimney gets up and turns the TV off, leaving Buck to get settled as he moves about the apartment, conducting his night-time routine. Or, what Buck assumes is his night-time routine. He doesn't know if he's ever been here before to see it, not that he'd remember if he had. Chimney is just moving towards the hallway, hand going for the light switch, when Buck thinks of something.

It sparks into his mind with the subtlety of a firecracker, and he blurts out, "Has anyone called my parents?"

The question stops Chimney in his tracks. He turns and looks at Buck with an expression of guarded confusion that isn't a reassuring indicator.

"Your parents," Chimney repeats, and Buck nods.

"I mean, they probably know everything about me, right? So we get them here, and I can look at, I dunno, pictures from when I was a kid and maybe that'll help. There's gotta be something more I can do than just… Sit here and watch movies."

"You told us not to call them." Of all the things Chimney could've said then, Buck wasn't expecting that in the slightest. Before he can ask what the hell that means, Chimney elaborates. He walks back into the living room, leaning against the door frame with his hands in his pockets and an odd look on his face. "Early on, you made it pretty clear you didn't ever want them called, no matter what. I don't have their number, I don't even think Bobby does, and if he does, he's not gonna use it. Not after you told him not to."

Static buzzes in Buck's ears, and he clears his throat. "Do you know why?" He regrets asking the question a second after it comes out, realizing too late that maybe the answer might not be something he wants to hear, not in this state. The list of reasons one could make an ultimatum like that is long and bad.

"I don't," is Chimney's answer, and Buck is both relieved and disappointed. "You don't… You don't talk about them, really. Ever."

"What about the rest of my family?" As he asks the question, Buck feels numb and cold. "Do I- Do I talk about them at all?"

"You've got a sister, I think." It's clear that Chimney is doing his best to keep his voice casual but there's a helpless awkwardness about it that Buck feels replicated tenfold in his own chest. "She's a lot older than you, last I heard you don't talk much."

"Oh." Buck is beginning to feel like a broken record, like he's been hollowed out and the only thing left in him are questions and the word 'oh'. He shifts a little, picks at a loose thread on the blanket covering his legs. "So just… Just to be clear, here, I've got roommates I met on Craigslist that I barely know, a sister I don't talk to, and parents I don't talk about. That's. That's just great. I sound like I've got a lot going for me."

It's impossible to keep the bitterness out of his voice, and if it weren't for everything that's happened today, Buck would feel bad about the petulant tone. He figures he's earned a little childish wallowing, given the last twelve hours.

"You left a part out, there, Buck." The voice is almost startling, like Buck had forgotten he wasn't alone in that room. That this is someone else's apartment, and that person is not fifteen feet away, looking at him with a slight smile like what he's saying is easy and simple. Obvious. "You've got us. You've got the one-eighteen." Chimney walks over and his hand is heavy and warm on Buck's shoulder, squeezing tight. "Parents aren't all they're cracked up to be, trust me, I get that a little too well, but family… Don't think for a second you don't have that, okay?"

"Okay," Buck breathes. His head throbs and his eyes burn and he tells himself it's because of the concussion, that the drugs he's been prescribed to take away some of the pain from his fall are what's leaving him so off-kilter, like he might break down at any moment.

And because he doesn't know any better, he figures he'll just have to take Chimney's word for it.

The light goes out, and Buck squeezes his eyes tight shut. There's something in him that doesn't want to be left alone in the dark, not after what he's learned, not when there's a churning feeling in his chest he can hardly swallow around. Eventually, though, his eyes crack open, and his focus is drawn to something.

The living room isn't dark. There's a soft glow coming from the floor, spreading a soft yellow light up the wall. A nightlight, plugged into an electrical outlet. Buck looks at it for a long time, and when sleep comes, it comes gently.


	3. Chapter 3

After two nights at Chimney's place, Buck finds himself passed on to Hen. Chimney drives, chattering the entire way, about everything and nothing all at once. Somewhere in the midst of it he mentions that Hen now 'gets to have her turn' with him, and as if somehow sensing exactly the cringing, guilty thought that sprung into Buck's mind upon hearing this, immediately continues with, "You know she was never gonna let me get away with keeping you all to myself. Can't hog our favorite Bourne Identity protagonist, me and Hen and Bobby have joint custody, it just wouldn't be fair."

There's an easy grin on Chimney's face like he's talking just to talk, but there's also something knowing in the look he shoots at Buck out of the corner of his eye at the next red light. It gives the impression that he'd said what he'd said for a pointed reason, like he'd known exactly what Buck had taken 'her turn' to mean. While Buck had gone straight to 'her turn to be stuck with him', Chimney course-corrected immediately to 'her turn to get to spend time with him', like that was some kind of valued commodity. The distinction sparks something warm in Buck's chest and he looks out the window, hoping it's not too obvious on his face.

The hand-off is executed without a hitch, Buck passed from Chimney's metaphorical custody and into that of Hen and her wife, Karen. He's introduced to Karen, waving and smiling awkwardly at her, saying, "Nice to meet you, ma'am." It was an instinct born of the uncomfortable, unsteady ground Buck feels like he's standing on, defaulting to the most placatingly respectful form of address he can think of.

"Ma'am? _Ma'am?"_ The response, shocked and slightly amused, indicates they have most definitely met before, and this is not what Buck is generally supposed to call his coworker slash friend's wife. She shakes her head and frowns at him with a combination of amusement and unnerved surprise, like she hadn't quite believed what she'd been told about his memory being gone _completely_ until just now, and says, "I'm not _that_ much older than you."

"Sorry, what, uh…" Buck clears his throat. "What do I usually call you?" He's got to get used to this, to asking these kinds of questions. It's been essentially three days since his injury and his memory shows no sign of returning. Until it does, he can't trip over the question every time he has to ask someone basic information about himself or their relationship.

"Karen," she tells him, the answer simply presented and without any of the stilting inflection the inquiry had held. "Come on in, we'll get you set up in the spare room."

The spare room in the Wilson house is nice, the bedspread comfortable and neatly made over the mattress. There's a duffel on a chair that Hen points out, saying that she'd gone back to his house and retrieved some of his clothes and things while he was still at Chimney's apartment. He thanks her absently, still looking around, searching for something familiar, trying to figure out if he's ever stayed in this spare room before. Just like every other time he's exercised that particular instinct in the last few days, it yields no results save for frustration and negative space, and Buck shakes his head, dismissing it and feeling foolish for having tried at all.

Since the hospital-prescribed waiting period has passed, Buck is allowed to get his head wet now. He's not supposed to soak his stitches but he's at least permitted to wash his hair, and he spends a long time just standing under the hot water, trying to let go of the tense ache in his muscles, built up over the last three days. By the time he's out, dressed in clothes Hen retrieved from his house, dinner is well underway, and Hen and Karen's son is home from his after-school program.

Denny is a good kid, who looks at Buck with wide, curious eyes when they 'meet' in the living room. Buck smiles at him and tries to look normal, whatever his normal looks like. He's not quite sure what, exactly, Denny has been told about what's going on with him, and he's not about to be the one to reveal more than the boy's supposed to know.

"You really don't remember _anything_ at all?" It's blunt and to the point, Denny's voice fascinated and baffled, and Hen's head snaps up from where she'd been stowing her son's backpack in the hallway closet.

"Denny," she says, sharp and rebuking, cringing apologetically at Buck.

"It's okay," Buck tells her, then turns his attention back to Denny. It's kind of refreshing, honestly, that there's at least one person who isn't tiptoeing around his condition, the swiss cheese that's been made of his mind, his identity. "Nothing at all," he says, shrugging. "They had to tell me what my name was at the hospital."

"Wow." Denny responds, eyebrows up high. Rather than scared or uncomfortable, he seems impressed and interested, which is definitely preferable to what Buck had been half-expecting. Before he can ask anything more, he's quickly distracted by a sound from the kitchen, darting in to see what Karen is doing.

"Sorry about that," says Hen when he's out of earshot, shaking her head. "We told him not to ask any rude questions, but y'know… Kids. If you don't want to talk about it, you can just tell him, he knows not to bother people when they don't like to answer questions about something."

"It really is okay." And, somewhat surprisingly, Buck is telling the truth. He hadn't known what it would be like to actually get directly questioned about what was going on with him, Chimney, Hen, and Karen thus far taking the approach of letting him guide conversations on the topic. "It's gotta be weird for him, if I was a kid I'd probably ask."

"Well, if you're sure. Just tell him to knock it off when you're tired of it. You know, he's really excited you're staying," Hen tells him, smiling a little and looking in the direction her son's run off to, chattering faintly in the background with her wife. It's an excruciating domestic sound, and the pause in the conversation is just long enough that Buck feels a sharp squeeze in his heart. It's like his body itself knows he's not supposed to be here, that he's a strange, lost interloper, interrupting something safe and calm and stable.

Throughout dinner, there's enough steady, idle chatter that Buck isn't left in his thoughts for long enough for the feeling to return. Denny talks endlessly about his day, his school, his friends, the snake the local zoo's reptile keeper brought in for a hands-on learning day. Hen looks faintly ill at that part of the conversation, and Buck seizes ahold of that piece of information, filing it possessively away with all of the other tidbits he's managed to collect about the people he apparently spends the most time with. Hen doesn't like snakes.

After dinner, Buck doesn't know what to do with himself. Denny takes off after being excused to do his homework, and he hovers uncertainly in the doorway of the kitchen, until spotting the sink, filling up slowly as Hen brings dishes in from the dining room. He walks over and turns the faucet on, grabbing a green and yellow sponge off the edge of the sink and starting to clean the plates. Footsteps sound as Hen brings in a set of water glasses, but they don't retreat like he was expecting. When she is still and silent for long enough that something has obviously interrupted her clean-up routine, Buck pauses, glancing to the side.

Hen, standing by the counter, is regarding him with an odd expression, contemplative and soft in a way Buck can't quite describe.

"What?" he asks, unable to help the hint of reflexive defensiveness that creeps into the word.

"Nothing," she says, still smiling slightly at him.

Unable to bear the gently piercing scrutiny of her attention directly any longer, Buck turns back to what he's doing. The plate he was washing is clean now, and he looks around for what to do with it. His hands, clutching the water-heated ceramic, are wet and soapy, unhelpful for the next step of this process. It's in looking for some kind of drying rack or towel that he catches sight of the dishwasher, built very obviously into the cupboard maybe five feet away from where he currently stands. In his searching need for something constructive to do, Buck has inadvertently created more work for everyone, when he really ought to have just been loading the dishwasher. Before he can apologize or get too deep in that line of thought, someone else's hands come into view, warm brown passing over pale peach to take the plate from him.

A towel set on the counter on her right, Hen is now standing right next to him. She dries the dish wordlessly, putting it away in the cupboard, then holds her palm out expectantly. Together, they wash and dry the dishes, nothing to break the calm quiet of the room save the running of the water, the sound of Karen humming along to the radio out in the other room. The water is pleasantly hot and the routine of cleaning the dishes and passing them off to Hen is soothing and Buck loses track of time. It feels like before they've hardly begun, they're finished, and he's draining the sink while Hen wipes down the errant spatters of water and soap that have escaped during their process.

"Can we keep him?" The question comes abruptly, Karen's voice sounding from the kitchen doorway, flatly serious, but her eyes, when Buck looks over, contain a twinkle of mirth. Hen snorts and when Buck looks back at her, she's shaking her head, laughing. "Look, I'm just saying. He does dishes, babe. Buck," Karen says, now addressing him directly, "if this whole firefighter thing doesn't work out, how would you feel about live-in nanny?"

"I'll send you my resume," Buck says tentatively, unsure if this is something he usually does, if theirs is the kind of relationship he can tease in. Seems to him, your friend's wife could poke fun at you, but poking fun back might not be the best bet. The risk is rewarded when Karen's wide smile crinkles her eyes and Hen chokes on another laugh.

In the hour that follows, Denny Wilson very quickly moves very high up on Buck's list of favorite people - a list admittedly extremely short at the moment, limited severely by the fact that he doesn't really know any people, at least any who aren't Chimney, Bobby, or the Wilsons. For the most part, Denny is treating him like everything is completely normal, like he's got a cool firefighter over at his house, which is the peak of excitement at his age, even when your mom is one too. Sometimes he asks questions, about Buck's memory, his injuries, but they're direct and curious. Like this one.

"Does your head hurt?" the kid asks without looking up from what he's doing.

He's sprawled out on his stomach on the living room carpet, brightly colored plastic bricks scattered around him, sorted into various piles. The instructions for the Lego firehouse he and Buck are now building together are spread across Buck's lap, where he sits cross-legged, facing Denny. Glancing up, then looking back down, Buck shrugs.

He answers the question with the same casual ease Denny asked it with, saying, "Yeah. Not as much as it did at first, though. I hit it pretty hard."

"That sucks," Denny says solemnly, and Buck nods, the corner of his mouth twitching up faintly.

"Yeah, it does."

They work on the Lego set for a while longer, until it's time for Denny to go to bed. He does so with only minor protests, and as Karen leaves with him upstairs, Hen comes out into the living room. She leans on the wall by the doorway, doesn't say anything for several long moments. Buck looks down at his hands, gathering the Lego pieces up into a plastic tub. He puts the half-finished structure in last, lifting it with slow, careful movements to avoid breaking it apart. It wouldn't be right, to destroy his and Denny's evening of hard work.

"You're the one that gave that to him, you know. The Lego firehouse set."

Buck looks up at that, making eye contact with Hen. A light frown takes up residence on his face, and he tries not to seem too eager for it, any amount of insight into his life, information about what kind of person he is.

"I am?" He's proud of the way his voice doesn't shake, though his mouth is dry and his fingers have stilled completely on the lid of the Lego storage tub.

Nodding, Hen walks farther into the room and sits on the couch, next to Buck's shoulder. "Yeah. He's been waiting to put it together until you came over, you promised to do it with him. You were gonna come over sometime next week, actually, so when Den found out you were coming tonight instead, he was ecstatic." There's a pause, and her face is so fond that Buck has to turn away from it. "Kids love you. It's kind of funny to watch, honestly, you're like the pied freakin' piper with them. Chim and I tease you about it, say it's because they know you're one of them."

There's mirth in her voice, light and happy. Buck's chest feels the same, and his laugh bubbles up in his lungs, joining hers. It's an odd feeling, to consciously realize this is the first time you can remember laughing.

Nobody drops him off when the next switch happens. Bobby comes to the Wilson house to pick him up. Walking to the car with his duffel bag slung over his shoulder, Buck feels like a kid being picked up after a sleepover. Once actually in the car, the a talk radio station playing quietly in the background and Bobby driving next to him, Buck feels oddly shy. His head hangs low, chin knocking against his chest when the vehicle hits a crack in the pavement, and though he searches, he doesn't find anything to say. All he finds are questions he doesn't ask, despite the fact that Bobby seems like the kind of person who has answers.

What do we talk about? Do we talk at all when it's not about work? Why did I forbid you from contacting my parents? Do I want to know? Is this what I'm normally like, or am I somebody you don't recognize? Do you think I'm ever going to remember?

What's going to happen to me if I don't?

It's a nondescript apartment complex they end up parked outside of, Bobby greeting one or two of his neighbors on the way inside. He holds the door for a woman who ends up entering the apartment across the hall from the one they stop at, and she gives Buck a friendly nod too, which brings about yet more questions - Are you just a friendly person? Or do you recognize me?

The inside of Bobby's apartment itself is on the small side but overall pretty nice. Buck likes the decor, mainly calm shades of blue and grey, with an old but comfortable looking couch taking up a wall in the modest living room already set up with blankets and pillows. It doesn't seem to pull out like the one he'd slept on at Chimney's place had, but it looks like the cushions are already deep enough and soft enough that it won't matter.

Setting his duffel carefully down next to the couch-turned-temporary-bed, Buck looks around again, and then over his shoulder at Bobby, who is depositing his keys in a dish by the door.

"It's a nice place, I like it," he says, feeling ridiculous the moment after it leaves his mouth. It's a truly pathetic, empty thing to say to somebody who you're at the very least close enough to that he's willing to sign up on the 'babysitting amnesiac Buck' roster. Bobby doesn't seem to have noticed the inadequacy of the first thing Buck has found to say since they were left alone together, instead taking his own survey of his apartment.

"I should hope so, you helped me get it set up like this."

It's a piece of information that startles Buck, unable to help the reflexive, "What? I did?" that comes out of his mouth, absolutely baffled. At least that explains why he's taken such an instant, approving stance on how things look, in a more specific way than he had in either Chimney or Hen's places of residence.

"It was in a bad way for a while," Bobby says in explanation, something odd about his tone of voice. His expression has gone strange as well, distant and contemplative like maybe he isn't just talking about the apartment. This theory is confirmed when he takes his focus off the walls and carpeting, the furniture and books stacked on the kitchen counter, and looks over at Buck. "So was I. This place and me, we were both a mess. You helped. You all did, but you especially. You were really insistent that my apartment needed fixing, so I have curtains now, and they match my lamp."

The curtains do indeed match the lamp, Buck notes. Getting focused on this distracts him from the lump in his throat for about five seconds, and then it's all he can think about, everything present in and missing from that sentence. Bobby doesn't explain what he'd meant by that, when he'd said he'd been a mess, and Buck doesn't push him on it. He's got at least some grasp of tact, or at least he hopes he does, and besides. He's supposed to already know. Whatever it was, he'd been there for it, and Bobby shouldn't have to explain whatever had been wrong with him all over again just because Buck can't remember.

Maybe it's still going on, and here Buck is, memory a whiteboard that's been erased completely clean, unaware that he's intruding when Bobby is already having a difficult time. It's impossible to know for sure, and so Buck is going to have to take it on blind faith that it's not a problem that he's here. It's something he's had to rely on a lot since the accident. Blind faith.

Bobby doesn't leave him a lot of time to get settled, which is probably a good thing. There's not a lot of settling to do, really, and too much empty space and nothing to fill it with hasn't exactly been a good thing for Buck these days. Soon enough, they're both in the kitchen, Bobby rummaging around in drawers and in the fridge, pulling things out and setting them up on the counter. Buck, assessing the items selected, couldn't for the life of him say what they were intended to make together.

"Where I'm from," Bobby tells him as he goes, placing a large glass pan on the cold, dormant stove-top, "there aren't a lot of occasions in life where it's not appropriate to make a hotdish. And though I've gotten to teach you a lot, this is one thing I hadn't gotten around to yet. Figured I'd teach you something new, so you wouldn't have to waste time learning something you were gonna remember anyway."

It's the first time anyone has said something like that with such a degree of certainty, firm in the belief that Buck will get his memories back, and soon enough that he won't have to relearn everything in the meantime. Hearing it makes his breath catch a little, and Buck clears his throat, irritated at his own response. He's been getting oddly emotional and off-balanced by far too much since waking up in the hospital, though he supposes at least part of that can be blamed on the concussion still spreading its effects across his behavior.

"Where is that, exactly?" he asks, instead of thinking too hard on Bobby teaching him things, on not being able to remember any of it now, on how that feels something akin to having failed. "Where you're from?"

"Minnesota."

Buck about chokes. "Minnesota? You're from _Minnesota?_ And you moved _here?_ I know Los Angeles has a hockey team, Bobby," though it's news to Buck that he knows this, the words coming out of his mouth without thought, "but we don't have any, like, _ice."_

The laugh he gets in response is more enthusiastic and lasts longer than Buck necessarily thinks is warranted, and he wonders a little bitterly if Bobby is humoring him or trying to make him feel better, until the older man straightens up and tells him, a little breathlessly, "You said, word for word, the exact same thing the first time you found that out." A long ten seconds while Bobby gets his breathing back under control, resuming his goal of organizing ingredients on the counter, and then he says, "You're not from here either, actually." Before Buck can ask, Bobby answers. "Pennsylvania. Wilkes-Barre, I think. Now. Hotdish."

Wordlessly, leaning back against the opposite counter in the small kitchen, Buck nods.

"Normally I'd make it with cream of mushroom soup," Bobby says, reaching up to pull a can out of the cupboard, "but you're allergic to mushrooms, so we're gonna go with cream of chicken."

_Allergic to mushrooms. From Pennsylvania._ Buck files the thoughts away, next to _good with kids_ and _estranged from family,_ adding them to his meager but slowly growing autobiography.

They cook together, side by side in Bobby's kitchen. Bobby gives him directions, telling him to cut carrots or grate cheddar cheese, with an easy familiarity that leads Buck to believe this is something they do together with some degree of frequency. The apartment is warm, and gets a few degrees warmer as the oven preheats, ground beef browning on the stove top with a soundtrack of quiet sizzling. Eventually, after the timer is set and the dishes are cleaned up and set in the dishwasher, all that's left to do is wait. While the hotdish cooks, Bobby waves Buck into the living room.

"Humor me for a minute," he says, lines deepening on his face as he takes Buck by the shoulders, pushing him to sit on the edge of the couch. "Let me check your stitches, make sure everything looks alright."

Rather than point out that Chimney and Hen would have noticed if there was something wrong with his stitches in the fifty-six odd times they checked, either by actually sitting Buck down to look or by stealing glances when they thought he wasn't paying attention, Buck obeys. He agreeably tilts his head when Bobby takes ahold of his jaw and moves him so that the stitches are illuminated by the lamp, the same one that matches the curtains. His other hand moves carefully through Buck's hair to get better visualization, and then a little longer than is justified by that, smoothing down wayward strands until he's satisfied, though satisfied with what, Buck couldn't say.

"Bruises doing alright?" Bobby asks, his voice a warm rumble from over Buck's head. Still and pliant in Bobby's hands, Buck just hums his agreement.

The fall from the roof had left him with more than just stitches and a scrambled brain. There was also deep, painful bruising, marking up his back and left side, where he'd taken the majority of the landing. He'd seen it when changing out of the hospital gown and each time he's changed his shirt or showered, and he knows from how it feels that there's worse damage where he can't see, and Buck is sure that if he were to try and get a glimpse, his back would still be painted in now yellow-green splotches. It feels better now than it had that first day, though, by leaps and bounds, so it's not a lie to say they're 'alright'. Something about that, not lying to Bobby, feels like it's important.

"Good. That's good." To the sound of a deep, measured breath from in front of him, Bobby's palm comes to settle over Buck's neck, thumb moving in a short, protective arc over the point of his pulse, thudding quietly in his throat. It's something that could feel deeply threatening, he supposes, the position of that hand, the strength he knows lies behind it, but it's not. It's the opposite, even. "Well, looks to me like you're going to be okay," is the final verdict on his condition.

Buck closes his eyes, focuses on the feeling of strong, gentle fingers still holding the side of his neck, and tells himself that he believes it. There's a dip in the cushion next to him, a shift in the touch, but Bobby doesn't let go. And in the time remaining not consumed by clean-up or the brief exam, Bobby continues to not let go, right until the moment the timer goes off, and dinner is ready.

It's not familiar, Buck wouldn't go that far. But something about this, standing here in this apartment he apparently helped decorate, looking at something he and Bobby made together - something Bobby taught him how to make… It doesn't feel familiar, but it feels right.


End file.
